The “Legendary” Master Bus Compression

Many producers struggle with this: Master Bus Compression…use it or not? If yes, what settings are relevant for me? What does it do? In this post I will show you how I do & use it. The following information is very useful, because I learned this from Grammy Award Winning Producers & Mixing Engineers, so it’s really Gold worth! Most of the records in the Industry use Master Bus Compression.

I prefer the Waves SSL Compressor on my Master Bus, because it has a certain characteristic which no other plug-in achives. It works best, for me at least. These are the setting, which I use everytime!

How to sell music

Sometimes, I play with the make up gain knob, if too much signal is coming in. Some Mixing Engineers would also change the Release time. There are certain tracks, which sound better with another release time.

I also created 2 tracks, so you can listen to the HUGE difference between COMPRESSED & UNCOMPRESSED.

Uncompressed Version:

Compressed Version:

I’m pretty sure that everybody will hear a huge difference & effect. This is actually the tool, that adds the final “radio characteristic” to your music. Hopefully this post helped you guys!

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